


The Unlettered Imitates Literature

by Carmarthen



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Crack, Death, Gallows Humor, Gen, Humor, Minor Character Death, References to Hamlet, References to Shakespeare, references to murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-30
Updated: 2014-03-30
Packaged: 2018-01-17 15:24:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1392655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carmarthen/pseuds/Carmarthen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Montparnasse accidentally reenacts the graveyard scene from <i>Hamlet.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Unlettered Imitates Literature

**Author's Note:**

> Basically people dared me to write this. Anything good is due to them or to Shakespeare, who I shamelessly ripped off.
> 
> Thanks to drcalvin for suggesting some key tweaks!

_“After which, go whither I push thee, the grave-digger is there; the Pantheon for some of us: all falls into the great hole. End. Finis. Total liquidation. This is the vanishing-point. Death is death, believe me.”_  
-Senator, Les Misérables, 1.1.8, “Philosophy after drinking”

* * *

It was a pleasant summer evening in the Père-Lachaise cemetery, cool and scented with the heavy fragrance of the decaying flowers left by mourners, only the soft cooing of doves punctuating the stillness. Montparnasse, however, was displeased with the fruits of his ambling.

He had not seen a single melancholy artist or abstracted student, no wealthy mourners too engaged in noisy weeping to notice a deft hand in their pocket, no veiled ladies who might enjoy a well-clad (if slightly patched) shoulder to cry upon.

Engaged in contemplation of his unfair misfortune, he nearly fell into an open grave, checked only by a rude and sepulchral cry. Straightening his waistcoat—a leaf-green watered silk almost still warm from its previous owner—and brushing a bit of dirt from his slimly cut trousers, Montparnasse endeavored with feline composure to look as though he had been perfectly aware of his surroundings all along.

The cry of warning came from a thin, livid fellow of indeterminate age. He wore a grimy waistcoat and stood shoulder-deep in the earth, prying away at the turf with a great mattock. He eyed Montparnasse with more skepticism than Montparnasse felt a peasant covered with grave-dirt and wearing a waistcoat two decades out of fashion had any right to. “Do you require anything, sir?” he asked, in a flawless Parisian accent which at once made Montparnasse dislike him.

When Montparnasse did not answer at once, he bent, rooted around, and then with an air of gloomy satisfaction produced a skull and placed it on the edge of the grave.

While he had, in his eighteen or so years of life, put a great many men in the earth, Montparnasse had rarely contemplated what happened to them after the alleyway. To him they all retained the faint blush of life in their stillness, marred only by the scarlet of blood seeping away: almost a beautiful contrast, at times. He had not considered the less savory following: the rot, the worms, the return to dust and muck.

Covering his nose with his handkerchief, he bent forward with an air of abstraction. It was impossible to conceive that this was the fate of all men.

The skull’s empty eye sockets seemed to stare back at him.

“You are a grave-digger,” he said, deciding that of the two occupants of the grave, the grave-digger was the less unsettling, if barely.

“I am,” said the man, with a sort of funereal dignity. “Although I was a student, and a scrivener; but I have ruined my hand for writing with the mattock some years past, and so I only dig, for I have children to feed. Five now, although it was eight once. My name is Gribier, and I am a Parisian.”

Montparnasse had largely stopped listening somewhere in the middle of the grave-digger’s speech; he had little interest in the lives of others. Yet the skull, brown and eyeless, drew him back. “How long will a man lie in the earth before he rots?”

Gribier shrugged, a disturbingly sinuous roll of bony shoulders, and cracked his knuckles. “If he be not rotten before he dies, perhaps eight or nine years. Half the people here want to lie next to the rich and famous when they die, but they’re too cheap to buy a plot for more than ten years.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Between you and me, I suppose sometimes that ten years might run a bit short, if space is tight.”

He bent again, retrieving a second skull, perhaps rather newer looking than the other. “This one, why, it’s only been in the ground perhaps three, four years; a proper wealthy fellow but a miser in the end. But it’s no difference to him if he stays another six years in the dirt or sits prettily in the ossuary over there with the others.”

He handed the skull to Montparnasse, who reflexively accepted it without thought. Montparnasse, who had slit a dozen throats with a steady hand, gagged a little.

“Whose was it?” he asked, holding it at arm’s length; it was one thing to replace his gloves, but he was fond of his coat.

“This, sir, was Felix Tholomyès, a magistrate before he died; but now you couldn’t tell him from a pauper.”

“Save, perhaps, that the pauper would not be interred among these tombs, but below in the muck,” Montparnasse murmured, although he had no particularly Republican feelings about this injustice; he himself meant to live forever. “Tholomyès…Tholomyès…” The name was familiar, in a vague way—ah! “Alas,” he said, offering the skull back to Gribier with as much flourish as he could manage, “poor Tholomyès. I knew him, Gribier: a fellow of fine taste in trousers. Good evening, sir.”

His gloves were certainly ruined, Montparnasse decided later that evening, and tossed them in the fire without a second thought. He then carefully removed and folded his coat, followed by his waistcoat, and at last his trousers: a quite serviceable pair once he had them taken in, although the _F. Tholomyès_ embroidered inside the waistband had nearly worn away.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. The Cimetière du Père-Lachaise was the largest cemetery in Paris. Originally unpopular due to its location, the administrators transferred the remains of famous people there in order to drum up business. It worked. Victor Hugo has this to say about it in _Les Misérables_ :
>
>> **2.8.5, “It is not necessary to be drunk in order to be immortal”**
>> 
>> _The bourgeois did not care much about being buried in the Vaugirard; it hinted at poverty. Pere-Lachaise if you please! to be buried in Pere-Lachaise is equivalent to having furniture of mahogany. It is recognized as elegant._
>> 
>> **M. Thénardier, 3.8.6, “The wild man in his lair"**
>> 
>> _"The idea that there is no equality, even when you are dead! Just look at Pere Lachaise! The great, those who are rich, are up above, in the acacia alley, which is paved. They can reach it in a carriage. The little people, the poor, the unhappy, well, what of them? they are put down below, where the mud is up to your knees, in the damp places. They are put there so that they will decay the sooner! You cannot go to see them without sinking into the earth."_  
> 
> 
> 3\. I have no idea whether remains were ever dug up early to make room for more, regardless of the length of time the plot was bought for, but it would not surprise me in the slightest if they were.
> 
> If you're wondering if I made something else up, I probably did.
> 
> 4\. The gravedigger Gribier appears in chapters 2.8.5 and 2.8.7 as the grave-digger of the convent of the Petit-Picpus. I am hypothesizing he might have found a new job at perhaps a better-paying cemetery a few years later, as he already had 7 children in (if I’m understanding the timeline correctly) ~~1829~~ 1824, despite being “young.”
> 
> 5\. Much of the dialogue is shamelessly paraphrased from Act 5, Scene 1 of Shakespeare’s _Hamlet._
> 
> 6\. Credit to drcalvin for suggesting Montparnasse accidentally reenacting _Hamlet_ , Morgan for suggesting including Gribier, and acaramelmacchiato for Tholomyès’ trousers. God knows how I’d write anything without other people’s ideas.


End file.
